1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telephony and, more particularly, to fault detection and resolution relating to telephone calls conducted, at least in part, over a packet-switched communication network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephony is the technology associated with the electronic transmission of voice, fax, or other information between distant parties using systems historically associated with the telephone. Conventional telephony networks are referred to as “circuit-switched” networks. A circuit-switched network generally routes traffic between a calling party and a called party over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). To establish a telephone call in the PSTN, switching centers must maintain a continuous electrical circuit between the calling party and the called party for the duration of the telephone call.
By comparison, Internet Protocol (IP) telephony refers to the use of packet-switched connections which commonly use IP to exchange voice, fax, and other forms of information. Rather than maintaining a continuous electrical circuit, communications exchanged over a packet-switched network take the form of packets of data being sent between the calling party and the called party.
The advent of IP telephony has led to the development of many new telephony features and capabilities. Despite such advances, the ability to debug faults for telephone calls remains limited. In particular, conventional debugging techniques for telephony systems lack the ability to debug a live or in-progress telephone call. Such is the case as conventional telephony systems are debugged using a simulation environment in which test calls are conducted. Simulation environments are “offline” systems which do not communicate with actual production telephony systems. As such, simulation environments have no ability to intercept a live telephone call in a production environment.
It would be beneficial to provide a technique for debugging live or in-progress telephone calls within an IP or packet-switched telephony environment which overcomes the limitations described above.